Buyer beware! How not to get screwed by your IT company

The Profit is a show that airs on CNBC Prime about struggling businesses finding a “savior” in the person of multi-millionaire Marcus Lemonis.

In each episode, Marcus, the CEO of Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises will find a business in dire need of help and radically change its’ core while investing a hefty amount of his money to save it.

What I love about the profit show is that since it is very real, sometimes the deals work and sometimes they don’t. That’s life isn’t it?

Being a life-long entrepreneur, I absolutely love the show. Marcus Lemonis is an incredible business man, and seems to have a heart. I came across a video interview with Marcus the other day.

How can you as an MSP use this to educate potential clients?

This interview really got me thinking. “I wouldn’t know if someone is BSing me.”, was his best quote. If someone like him will not invest in tech companies because he’s outside his element, how does the normal business owner make an educated decision about which IT company to choose to support them? The short answer…they shouldn’t be. At least not by themselves. Let’s face it. The average business owner has no idea whether they are being BS’d either. They usually start looking for another IT company when something is on fire and they need it fixed right away, or their current guy (assuming they have one) has royally screwed something up. After jumping on Google and calling down the list of names one by one, they finally get someone on the phone.

That’s where you as an MSP come in. Most IT companies go in and start talking about the tech. After a “Free Network Assessment”, they drop a RapidFire report on them (which might as well be written in a foreign language to the business owner), and kindly point out all the things that are wrong with their systems and network, and how they are going to be their savior for the low price of $xxx/month.

The business owner has no basis in which to make a decision. They have no idea whether that IT company will suck as bad as the last guy. They have no idea whether they are being BS’d. The only basis they have to make a decision is whether they like the sales guy, and the price. A decision based upon either of these two alone will never be a good choice. You already know this.

If I have just described your sales process, PLEASE change it! You will always look just like all the other IT companies to the business owner, and they will always make the decision solely on price. Even if you win the account initially, you will lose in the end. I’ll bet you already know this too.

Stealing Genius is a concept I learned a few years back from Steve Miller. Feel free to “steal” this content to use in your MSP practice.